Anatomy of Failed Design: nWoD

[ACOS]

If the penalties reduce your dicepool to zero, then you are rolling hail mary, instead of a normal die. Which means you only succeed on 10 and critfail on 1.

... and, IIRC, doesn't explode.

[Username17]

The bottom line is that armor values are trivial and defense values converge to zero. So while "yes" armor makes small attacks more smaller than large ones and nominally creates a difference between large attacks and numerous attacks - that difference is quite small. And defense both doesn't apply to ranged attacks and is reduced by 1 for each attack you've already suffered. So even if your defense was high to begin with (and I remind you that the game tries to pass off a defense of 3 as huge), it still only has any effect at all on a handful of attackers.

The dicepools in nWoD are quite large and the number of dice that have to be rolled before characters go down is titanic. Armor makes a difference, but it's such a mop vs. the ocean that that difference likely doesn't translate to buying a character even a single round of consciousness. And defense doesn't make any difference even when it applies, which it usually does not.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Your defense rating is a number that is usually 2, because it is the lowest of 2 stats. It is subtracted from the dicepool of an oncoming attack. Except that it doesn't apply against ranged weapons. And it is reduced by 1 for every extra attack you suffer. And you don't get it at all if you full attack to get two attacks in a round. So when facing the short bus, your defense rating means jack diddly.

Armor is more interesting. It's a number that is subtracted from incoming attack pools. It is however usually a number that is about two, which means that when facing enemies with minimum stats, no skills, and basic weapons, they still get a die. A normal weapon provides 3 extra dice or more all bit itself.

From earlier in the thread. I have never read nWoD, but the gist seems to be that even if you get your defense rating it is ablative and can be trivially reduced to zero by a few extra dudes with sticks. Similarly, the bonus dice you get from having a weapon seems to be larger than penalty from your opponent's armor; factoring in minimum competency attributes simply makes the matter worse. The end effect isn't perfectly linear, but it will be remarkably close for the values you'd expect to see in use.

Ninja'd.

[TheFlatline]

I don't think this can be said enough times: there is no fucking damage roll. No damage, no soak. Your to-hit roll is also your damage roll. And it's a dicepool system. If I roll 2 dice I am handing out exactly and linearly half as much damage as a guy rolling 4 dice. If there are two of me, we are handing out the same damage (actually more, because there are multiple attacker bonuses, but you get the idea). This means that a handful of anyone with sticks has the combined offensive output of anything in the whole game. So actual combat is pretty much just War with the cards replaced by piles of dice. My side has a pile of dice, so does your side. The biggest pile almost invariably wins and no one cares.
-Username17

Ultimate thread necro, but the love of a woman is at stake. Can anyone explain this assertion to me. I've glanced very quickly at the book, but it looks as though armor and defense work as dicepool penalties to the attacker. Doesn't that solve this problem the same way that soak would?

If I have 1 points of armor, than one 4 die attacker should deal 50% more damage than 2 2 die attackers, right?

If memory serves unless you shit-can your entire turn of actions you can only defend against one attack, so two 2 die attackers is preferable to 1 4 die attack, since odds are the 1 4die attack is going to have defense applied to it in addition to soak. Besides, the weapon's "damage" adds fucking dice to your dice pool apparently. So in general dice pools grow way faster than defense can keep up.

In oWoD and nWoD, whichever side has the most actions wins because they have the most attacks.